History There appears to have been no attempt to record the Society's history until 1987 when the then Archivist and former Chairman, Pegeen Morris, began enquiries in connection with the Society's 80th anniversary. She established that the Society had been founded by Francis J Foote in 1917. Her historical notes were subsequently expanded by John Underhill and his wife, Val, in 2005 for the Society's 90th year and the result placed on the Society's website that year. The present document is an expansion of these earlier accounts.            There is tantalisingly little information about the Society's foundation and its history before World War 2. In fact, there are only two sources - a programme for a performance of  Mendelssohn's Elijah on 15th May 1929 and a cutting from the Seaford Chronicle dated 22nd March 1935. Nevertheless, from these two documents we can establish that the Society was created by the oratorio's conductor, Francis J Foote, in 1917.  It appears he remained the Society's conductor until the choir closed down during World War 2 and the austere years that immediately followed it. There is, however, an oral report that during the 1930s the choir was conducted by F A Stammers, the manager of the dairy in Broad Street whose home was at "Clayton" in Sutton Road. It has not been possible to confirm this though it seems quite likely as Stammers founded the Seaford Operatic Society in 1927 and regularly conducted performances of Gilbert and Sullivan in the town.           A performance of Mendelssohn's Elijah in 1929, held in the Queen's Hall (now known as the Drill Hall) in the upper part of Broad Street, seems to have been a rather grand affair.  Advertised like a contemporary feature film, it was claimed as "The most distinguished and important musical event of the year ... locally". It described Seaford Choral Society as a "highly trained chorus" and he oratorio was to be accompanied by "an entirely professional orchestra (namely Sir Henry Wood's Queen's Hall and the Royal Academy of Music orchestras) - "every member being a highly-trained soloist on his or her instrument". In all, some 150 performers were involved and the performance was to be "given according to First Class London standards of excellence". Presented in a town the size of Seaford, the event was "deserving of the utmost support".   In 1929, singers interested in joining the Society were asked to write to Francis Foote at the Aeolian Hall Studios, New Bond Street, London where they were expected to undergo a vigorous sight-reading and performance audition. From this it is clear that the original Seaford Choral Society was a genuine choir, as opposed to the community choir it became after WW2. (In current parlance, members of a choir are selected after audition, while a choral society, sometimes known as a community choir, accepts any who which to join.),           A Seaford Chronicle cutting, and another from the Eastbourne Chronicle, both from 1935, refer to a number of members of the Seaford and Eastbourne Choral Societies travelling to Tunbridge Wells for a performance of Handel's Samson and Messiah conducted by Foote who clearly ran a number of choirs in Sussex and Kent and presented many concerts in the south east of England and possibly in London too.           Francis Foote born in 1872,  the son of a Tunbridge Wells butcher and greengrocer in. In 1894 Foote married a South African, Olivia Vallance. She was some thirteen years older than he and ran their large home at 16 Mount Ephraim Road as a lodging house, "Napier Mansions".  The house was registered in her name from 1898 and the 1911 Census records the house has having six rooms for visitors. The family employed four servants to run the establishment. The Footes had just one son, Gerthie Herbert Foote, born in 1897.            In 1904 Foote gathered a group of singers in Tunbridge Wells and called them "The Francis Foote Choir". This choir gave regular and ambitious concerts:  its first performance in 1904 was of Brahms' German Requiem in the Great Hall in Tunbridge Wells. In 1919 he organised and conducted a Peace Concert in Calverley Grounds in Tunbridge Wells with 2000 schoolchildren and 200 adults in a performance of Edward German's Merrie England.  In 1920 Foote's Choir was renamed the  Royal Tunbridge Wells Choral Society (RTWCS) and celebrated their centenary in 2004.            Foote himself had initially trained as a violinist and singer at the Royal College of Music between 1903 and 1909, when he gained his ARAM qualification. He evidently composed several pieces of music, including a Mass in G Minor, but it probably remained unpublished: the British Library has no record of Foote's compositions. He was clearly an ambitious man musically for, not content with running the RTWCS and teaching, he founded and conducted several other choirs, including in 1917 the Seaford Choral Society. In some ways travelling between Tunbridge Wells and Seaford was much easier than it is in the 21st century, though it was a time-consuming journey via Lewes and Uckfield. It was also possible to catch a bus from Lewes (the Kent & Maidstone bus 119 that ran from Pool Valley in Brighton to Tunbridge Wells). It is, of course, equally possible, that Foote was wealthy enough to run a car.           Foote remained conductor of the RTWCS until 1942, when he retired: it is possible that he gave up the Seaford Choral Society at the same time, if not before. He died at his home at the age of 84 in the early part of 1957, an event that seems to have passed unnoticed in Seaford.            After lying dormant in the 1940s, the Seaford Choral Society was reformed as a direct consequence of the Festival of Britain in 1951, when a performance of Mendelssohn's Hymn of Praise by the combined choirs of Seaford's churches was conducted by a Mr Montague Wheeler. Some 70 singers were involved as well as 30 orchestral players. As a consequence, one of the organising committee, A E Masters, urged the formation of a permanent choral society in the town. He duly became the Seaford Choral Society's first Chairman and Secretary, with Wheeler as its conductor and musical director.  Among the singers in the performance of Hymn of Praise were some of the staff of Micklefield School, one of Seaford's many private schools. One of those involved with the new Society was Michael Lane, the County Music Adviser for East Sussex. He became the Society's first post-war music director when the Society had an established membership of about 80 voices. The  revived Society duly gave its first recital with the Eastbourne Philharmonic Society in November 1951. According to another press cutting, the Society's first year (1951 - 1952) "was difficult" because exceptionally bad weather affected attendance at the choir's concert and, notwithstanding the enthusiasm of some 58 members, the Society made a loss of £18 9s 11d.  The Society looked to the National Federation of Music Societies for financial support and for a subsidy to cover the loss. It is not known whether this application was successful, but the Society continued and became an important part of the town's cultural life. The Society still retains its membership of the National Federation (now known as Making Music).            During the 1960s the choir was small in size, with about thirty voices, and its repertoire was restricted to small-scale Christmas and chamber concerts. The Society gave one concert each year in Seaford Parish Church (St Leonard's Church) and was also involved in the annual Lewes Music Festival, founded in 1921 to encourage choral singing in the district. During the 1960s the Society competed in individual classes for choirs, including madrigal, part song, and oratorio classes. It also participated in the highlight of the annual Lewes Festival, the concluding concert, when all the competing choirs joined to perform major works. These included Brahms's German Requiem, Elgar's Dream of Gerontius, and Bach's St John Passion. An especially memorable performance of the latter was conducted at Lewes by Dr Paul Steinitz. Other eminent conductors at the Lewes Festival included Sir Adrian Boult and Peter Gellhorn.            Following the last Lewes Festival around 1975, the Society reverted to giving two concerts a year in Seaford. It is unfortunate that neither East Sussex Archives nor Lewes Library has retained a collection of Lewes Festival programmes. It is thus not possible to reconstruct the Society's repertoire between 1921 and the early1960s with any certainty.  However the Society's own archive contains materials that record most of the Society's programmes from 1965.            The Society has also joined with Eastbourne's Heritage Singers (an ailing choir rescued by John and Val Underhill in 1992) to perform Parry's Invocation to Music. While performances were usually accompanied by piano or organ, they have been occasionally augmented by string players including the Fiori String Quartet and, more recently, the Exceat Players. Besides performances of evergreen favourites such as Mozart's Requiem, some neglected works have been introduced to local audiences including Liszt's Missa Coronationalis (Hungarian Coronation Mass), Dvorak's Te Deum and Hummel's Mass in E flat. The Society has also combined forces with Seaford Music Society for chamber and choral music concerts in the Roman Catholic Church of St Thomas More. In these concerts, string quartets by the Fiori Quartet were usually followed by a larger work performed with full choral and string resources. Finally, to popularise the Society, members have taken part in Saturday afternoon "Workshop Road Shows" in various venues and in singing Christmas carols with Seaford's' Silver Band or in Seaford's medieval crypt as part of late night Christmas shopping evening.            Innovations in the 1990s included "Almost Instant" Good Friday performances of favourite sacred works including Faure's Requiem, Vivaldi's Gloria, Stainer's The Crucifixion, and Gounod's St Cecilia Mass. These concerts were (and are) fund-raising events for causes of the vicar's choosing. All the participants, including soloists and audience, pay a small entrance fee, with a retiring collection in aid of the cause. These "scratch" performances proved valuable opportunities to repeat well-known works after minimum rehearsals, as well as acting as a recruiting opportunity.            It appears a proper Constitution was not laid down until about 1969. Among other things, this created an elected Committee with representatives chosen from each of the four sections of the choir. Soloists were chosen by this committee on the basis of auditions, but more usually by means of tapes submitted with potential soloists' CVs. This changed in the 1980s when Gordon Lawson established that this was the responsibility of the Music Director. In 1997, for reasons that are now unclear, the Society was at its lowest ebb, with membership down to 30 (11 sopranos, 12 contraltos, and 7 undifferentiated tenors and basses). Performances under Lawson's conductorship had to be reinforced with members of his Ringmer choir. However, its fortunes rose again under the leadership of John Underhill, who raised the choir's membership to over 100 by the time he retired in 2008.           The Society has used a number of rehearsal venues over the years:  Seaford Primary School in Church Street (now a medical practice), Seaford Head School, the United Reform Church hall, the Baptist Church hall and, since 1997, Cradle Hill School.           Seaford Choral Society has been blessed with a number of able Musical Directors, mostly current or recently-retired school music teachers and organists, all of whom have brought their individual styles to the choir. They include Montague Wheeler, Michael Lane, Nancy Plumber (Sussex Rural Music School, Lewes, 1958 - 1984), Miss Ratner (Music Teacher at Micklefield School), Margaret Darwall-Smith (Micklefield School), Cecil Coram (organist at St Leonard's), Brian Richards (organist and choirmaster at St Leonard's, 1958 - 1989), Mavis (Paddy) Lister, Gordon Lawson, Charles Spanner, John Underhill, and Sion Parry.           Montague Wheeler, who succeeded Stammers as conductor of the Seaford Operatic Society in the 1940s, gave regular performances of Gilbert and Sullivan at the Queen's Hall.  In retirement Michael Lane published On the Trail of Writers in Sussex (Seaford 1996). Mavis Lister, a graduate of the Royal School of Music, had been a music teacher in London. She retired to Seaford in 1983 and conducted the choir until December 1994 when she was in her early seventies. Gordon Lawson, a Cambridge-educated musician, was for most of his career the music master at Brighton College. He retired from teaching in 1987 and took up composition as well as acting as organist at Ringmer Parish Church (1991 - 1995) and at Alfriston 1995. While still teaching in Brighton he acted as the Society's music director from 1982 - 1988. He then went to Malaysia for a period of teaching. When he returned to Seaford in 1995 he again agreed to act as the Society's music director, but retired finally in 1997 when he moved to Spain. Charles Spanner was organist of the Church of Our Lady of Ransom in Eastbourne and the proprietor of the private Eastbourne Music Academy in Carlisle Road which held regular concerts every Sunday during the 1990s. He subsequently moved to Dover where he is currently organist at Charleton Church and a schoolmaster. John Underhill, who had been a baritone soloist with various London choirs during his business career, had previously sung with the Society when he took over as music director in 1997.  His wife, Val, acted as rehearsal pianist. Most recently, the current Music Director  Sion Parry, is Assistant Director of Music at Eastbourne College. Conductors and Musical Directors Over the years, the Society has enjoyed working with numerous gifted musical directors.  Records for the Society's early years are largely missing; information from the 1950s on is more comprehensive. F S Stammers:  during 1930s Montague Wheeler:  1951-1955 Michael Lane:  1957 - 1967; then made President Stanford Robinson:  1960 Sir Adrian Boult:  1961 Cecil Cope: 1962 Myer Friedman:  1962, 1967 Nancy Plummer: 1964 Dr Paul Steinitz: 1965, 1966, 1968 Margaret Darwall-Smith: 1965 - 1977, 1982 Cecil Coram: 1968 - 1970 Ronald Sampson: 1969 Hervey Alan: 1970 Peter Gellhorn: 1971 Anthony Hopkins: 1972 Yuval Zaliouk: 1973 Brian Richards: 1977 - 1981 Leone Ratner: 1981 Gordon Lawson:  1982 - 1988, 1991, 1994 - 1997 Graham Jones: 1988 Charles Spanner:  1988 - 1990 Mavis (Paddy) Lister:  1990 - 1994 Michael Downes: 1996 John Underhill:  1997 - 2008 Sion Parry: 2008 - Chairmen Although a Constitution was adopted in 1969, there is no record of who served as Chairman prior to 1990. The Revd Michael Ottoway:  1990 - 1992 Pegeen Morris:  1992 - 1998 John Gregory:  1999 - 2005 Beryl Henley:  2005 - 2007 Michael Etheridge:  2007 - 2010 Mike Rogers:  2010 -   Concert venues   Since 1951 the Society has performed at the following venues other than St Leonard’s Church, Seaford             Burgess Hill: 1971 Congress Theatre, Eastbourne:  1988 Hove Parish Church:  1969 Lewes Town Hall:  1957, 1960, 1961,1962, 1965, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970, 1972, 1975 Micklefield School:  1985, 1986 Peacehaven Evangelical Free Church:  2004 Queen’s Hall Seaford:  1951 Seaford Secondary School (Seaford Head School): 1971 St Andrew’s Church, Bishopstone:  2003, 2004, 2005 St Bartholomew’s Church, Brighton:  1973 St Mary’s Kingsmead:  1978-1989 St Michael’s Church, Newhaven:  2002 St Peter’s Church, Brighton:  1991, 1994 St Saviour’s Church, Eastbourne:  2001 St Thomas More Catholic Church: 1982, 1987, 1988, 2001, 2002 United Reform Church:  1994 Weatherpoint:  1986, 1987, 1989   With many thanks to Bill Brock, who compiled this information from the Society's archives.